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there are these great sea changes that are very difficult to plot and you can't quite know what buttons to press to bring them about but they do happen and it's up to us if we care about it to try and bring that about whether we will succeed or not it's almost like you know that you simply have this obligation you're listening to the science focused podcast from the BBC sites Focus magazine team with the UK's best-selling Science and Technology monthly available in print and in several digital formats throughout the world find out more at science focus calm oh look out for us in your App Store hello and welcome to the science focused podcast I'm Alice Lipscomb Southwell the production editor
a BBC science focus magazine Sir David Attenborough has spent more than half a century bringing us incredible stories from the natural world and championing its protection at the same time on the 5th of April a new eight-part Natural History documentary series will go live on Netflix it's called our planet and it's produced by the team behind blue planet and planet Earth and it's narrated by Sir David the series is different from the natural history shows that have come before according to the show's creators it explains that what we do in the next 20 years is crucial for the future of the environment and it outlines the must saves the big but simple changes we need to make to give us the best shot
possible of maintaining the health of the natural world we talked to Sir David about what we need to do to protect the environment that we so critically depend on whether he's optimistic about its future and which natural phenomenon he'll be most sad to lose after that you'll hear our discussion with our planet producers Keith Shirley and Alastair father girl we'll talk about spending their lives working in natural history filmmaking and tell us why I think Donald Trump has actually done some good for the environment he is Sir David Attenborough talking to editorial assistant Helen Glenny David you've spent the majority of your career encouraging people to care for the natural world do you now feel optimistic
or pessimistic about its future I feel that the world is more aware of what now there has been for most of my career fifty years ago people didn't think there was a problem and there wasn't a problem that's commensurate with the problem that we face now but the problem has got bigger that's that's the difficulty people are more aware of they're more aware of conservation they're more aware of what we're doing to the world my goodness that better be al because other ways been totally wasting our time and then loui I mean it's a big responsibility that nationalist filmmakers how if it's fast like I said I'd love to spend all the time saying look at these wonderful things aren't they lovely and enjoyable
and beautiful and enjoy them that's what they're of it's the greatest pleasure you can think of but you have a responsibility for pointing out at the same time that unless we change our ways they're not gonna be there phone do you think that you say the scale of the problem is increasing but also our awareness is increasing and probably our ability to cope with the problems increasing do you think that will end up getting to a point where we are able to to fix all these problems that we've created we can do that right now all you needs their will I mean we can stop using plastic if we want to remind you and that's easy to say isn't it I mean it did how do you watch it in practice and does it matter
that you sort out through your rubbish and put the plastic in one hand does it matter that you should refuse to take a plastic bag when you're given your groceries yes it does and we have to do that and so but it's all pervasive I mean this is extremely difficult and indeed of course a lot of the problem doesn't mess here but it's in the rest of the world they're huge problems but already in this country the people have made a difference and that's that's how it starts I mean they can start somewhere every journey starts with one step and it has to start somewhere and it is starting so I feel that we are more sensitive to solving the problems but the trouble is the problems got bigger and so you have one step you take
the problem gets larger than that but in a sense it's irrelevant to see I mean I whether I think we're going to solve these problems or whether I don't all I know is that I couldn't look my great can children the eye and say I knew what was happening I didn't bother to tell anybody or to do anything about it personally over the last 60 or 70 years you've been in this really unique position where you've been able to see the natural world up very close but you've also witnessed the destructive things that we're doing to it what have you learned from there that you think everybody should know everybody should realize that actually this is not just a fad or just because I like Dicky Birds
everything the fact of the matter is that you and me and the whole of the rest of the human species are crucially dependent upon the health of the natural world for every mouthful of food that we eat on every breath of air we take is it comes from the natural world if the seas stopped producing oxygen will be unable to breathe there is no food that we can take that we can digest that doesn't originate from the latter world we can't manufacture it we can't synthesize for we can synthesize elements of it but we can't synthesize a proper diet so if we damage the natural world to that extent we damage ourselves now you've done a lot of work recently with going to the UN climate talks to Davos and you've
sort of been an advocate for the environment now do you feel when going to those things that the politicians are listening do you think we're ever going to get effective change at a policy yeah I know the I think that figures getting as old as I am it will be naive to think certainly these enormous ly powerful men and organizations are conditioned because you can't say something that they're gonna change our or not the world doesn't work like that but the world does work in the mysterious ways and the in that there is groundswell there are grounds I mean the example I often think of is that you know in the middle of the nineteenth century it was quite acceptable for human beings decent ordinary human beings like you and me
to think we could own other human beings as slaves and then we could buy them and sell them and within a period of about 25 years that certainly became totally 100 percent and it became intolerable that any sophisticated or decent human being could possibly hold such a belief so there are these great sea changes that are very difficult to plot and you can't quite know what buttons to press to bring them about but they do happen and it's up to us if we care about it to try and bring that about whether we want to succeed or it's neither almost neither here nor there you simply have this obligation where do we start what do you think is important that we achieve in these if we have a 20 year
time span what do we need to do well of course it you and I what can we do we can say not use plastic bags but you and I know perfectly well there's a bigger issue than that and that in the end it has to be international agreements and you may say more people sitting in closed rooms and talking well yes it is but it but and it's not easy and it really has never been done except for the whaling agreement and the waning agreement for the first time nations seeking nations a rather world got together saw the danger and said right we will do something we will stop whaling and they did and within that period whatever it is fifty years less suddenly whales have come back when he if we can achieve that we
can we can achieve other things too and all you can do is to make sure that you try and find the people who've got their fingers on them on the levers on the right big levers pian message and whatever you say about Davos there are a lot of people there with a lot of Pinker's on some very big levers and if they go away from Davos I mean what governs the way they think it's not just they've got beyond the balance sheet they're men of infinite power they certainly don't want any more money themselves what makes them get up in the morning what makes them want to make a decision or a tough decision and conscience I suppose so how do you get to that when you go to that by going and saying look this is a
situation this is how it is these are the problems and if you've got the opportunity to do that you'd better bloody well do it you know there are a couple of politicians though that have got fingers on some very big levers and don't seem to have much of a conscience Trump as what do you think of both but does that mean you say when that case I won't bother but if you were trying to speak specifically to them what would you go for well I would do exactly the same as I do to anybody else I'd look these are the facts that but there are some people who you feel are never going to change their opinion no matter what you say and I could well be that mr.
Trump is one of them and it could well be and I can tell they've you know about Australia there are people in Australia that way right now and all you can do is to say look that's the situation and if you're in the Democrat situation in a Democratic Society convinced the electorate that you're right and that you their people you put in power the people who see what the truth is if you think about all of the experiences that you've had in the natural world what would you most want your grandkids or your great grandkids to be able to see what's people really stands out to you comparing a resource style oh yeah easy answer yeah there is no more I can't think of a moment there had more effect on me than the first time I dived with a laugh:
on the Barrier Reef which was well on a coral reef any quarry that was the first time I did and that was in 1956 mm-hmm and I mean the gear we had was clunky my skills were almost non-existent I mean I had dived about four times in the murky waters of the English Channel that's all and then I put on this thing you must done it I'll bet I know I've snow cold I've never done I will dive is it transforming feeling because suddenly you're no longer anchored to the ground with gravity suddenly you are just neutral and you only have to do that with your leg and you go up or you go down but that in itself is transformative I mean that in itself is amazing but when you look down there are 500 different species of creatures own
just something that you've never seen anything like them before and the most wonderful colors they do the most extraordinary things they some of the fish yes but others you've no idea what they are and now all exquisitely beautiful and they're all absolutely preoccupied with their own things they take that basal notice taught you that is an experience which will never forget how major we go yeah because the scale of these problems that we're facing often seems so big what's one thing that you'd employ people to do on a personal level don't waste anything don't waste power don't waste food and don't waste time but don't waste the world is enormous ly precious and your time on it is precious don't waste it but also I mean don't
have these lights wanted to be on you know don't and don't eat food and leave 50% of it on your plate and don't waste your time and recognize that every mouthful of food we eat and every breath we take we have it the natural world that was Sir David Attenborough talking about what we need to do to halt the decline of the environment Keith Scholey and Alastair Fothergill have led long careers in Natural History programming with the BBC having worked with Sir David on blue planet and planet Earth among a whole host of other shows they were joint series producers on our planet a program that's been four years in the making Alastair can you give me the pitch for our planet what makes it different from
other natural history shows that you've worked on I worked on by the death did that series and I think pro-death was sort of a celebration of all the key habitats on the planet and if you watched our deserts episode we'd show you the best at deserts in the world and explain their ecology and the tagline of that series was planet Earth as you've never seen it before and if there was a tagline to this series it's our planet as you've never understood it before mm-hmm and I think the key difference is we felt time was right having completed you know we done blue planet Earth Frozen Planet to do a series that dealt for the first time in depth with the ecological and environmental challenges to our planet
and we didn't want it to be doom and gloom we didn't want it to be we didn't want to film destruction we wanted to film the wildernesses and the animals that still remain because they're still so and explain their value to the planet so for instance you know half the air we breathe comes from the oceans but also if there's any chance of preserving biodiversity for future generations what are the must Said's and we felt that was a very fresh message and also a very timely message if even four years ago when we started on this journey the interest and the care about the planet which sort of wasn't as it is now it's so grown and actually being on Netflix is particularly good because they have a very young skew in their audience you know their most of their audience is
actually under 30 and those are the people more than anybody who care about this because they have inherited a pretty damaged mm-hmm you talk about the must saves which is really interesting there's a really interesting point what what have you identified as those must saves can you give us a in the grand scheme of the thing for each habitat what we look at is more the key issue with each habitat so like in the grasslands episode it's all about space and you can't have a grass and green you can't have the Serengeti migration if you don't have enough space for it in fact most great my migrations of our world have disappeared because we took away that kind of space so each shows says look you've got to
actually concentrate on just one thing and make sure that you deal with that issue and we have this online site then our planet comm which then we direct the audience to which will then actually say to you okay if you want to make space for grasslands this is what you have to do and it's actually quite simple it's all about the food weed and so if we if people change their diet or change the way we produce food we can have a huge amount more space for nature so this is the kind of the sort of principle of the whole series I think then within each show there obviously we sort of highlight individual animals which are you know in really suffering and the RI Newtown in the jungles of Borneo
we carry on the way we are will be gone in these will be the last generation of wild alright who turns and again that's about space for them and that were in the rainforest we also do you know I would say the tropical forests film we do explain that the different rain forests like South America and the African in the Asian are very different so you can't just preserve the Amazon you might think that's a simple thing to do and you know we film the deep sea coral reefs because how they are so important they're more extensive than the shallow water reefs and yet we're destroying them through dredging so it's just giving people a sense of what's precious and what is the problem and
also equally important in what is the solution you know it's not always an obvious solution but we try and give people a positive message as well and on the as Keith mentions on ARPANET comm the surrounding online activity there will be some things people can do individually to make a difference fantastic Casey yours must have gone back to places that you've been two years before decades before filming what is what's really noticeable for you that's changed I've worked in Antarctic for a lot I did a spherical life in the freezer and then Frozen Planet and it's beautiful island called South Georgia and when Shackleton was there he had an amazing photographer with him called Hurley who took photographs of glaciers
very beautiful Blasius and I went back there once with David is in another time another about twenty years later and you could literally see the glacier going up the hill the other big change on the Antarctic Peninsula the different penguins in Antarctica adapted different amounts of ice and famously the Adelie penguin is the deep south penguin that then feeds around and under ice and in the peninsula which is his long arm that sticks north and has been most affected by climate change it the Adelie penguin has become much rarer and is only found in the south and it's been replaced by the Gentoo penguin which is a penguin that breeds on the falklands in South Georgia on traditional was a northern penguin so
you can actually see that in the birds and the other place obviously we work a lot in Svalbard with polar bears and I have deaf and I definitely noticed that in the summer the ice is melting much earlier there and for polar bears that their window of hunting is reduced I grew up in Kenya as a kid I mean in the 60s in Kenya more wildlife was seen outside national parks and in tho everywhere you drive there was wildlife cheetahs lines everything just off the main roads lots of bush now it's completely confined to national parks so all the vast majority of wildlife out outside has gone and that's a you know that's a staggering change in just 50 years and we're now getting to the point now so but if these if the national
parks are not protected you lose everything so you're in the last that becomes a real focus yes so you guys have I'm sure been in a very unique position throughout your careers where you've seen the diversity of the natural world probably closer than most people oh but at the same time you've witnessed these things you've witnessed this destruction is there anything that you think that you've learnt from there that you think that we should all know I think the I think that what's what's really clear most people think oh it's it's with nothing we can do it's just it's its problems profits problems and I think to a certain extent conservationists have set that idea out there just lots of little tiny problems
there are some very big but simple things that you need to sort and if you sort those big simple things and they need to be sorted quickly you can fix so much of this the oceans classic example the open ocean is its it is going down the tube very quickly largely because of overfishing but the people who are fishing it there are only about four or five nations who actually fish at the open ocean and it's all has to be subsidized because it's so unprofitable and so you have to think well why not just stop doing it of course we have this huge sort of story of what happened with the great whales who were going down the tube because they were being overfished and we just decided to ban fishing of whales
whaling and they found straight back so you know there are all you need to do to save the over the open ocean and the open ocean is crucial for everyone not to eat fish but periods we know it's probably the biggest client carbon sump it's one of our biggest weapons in dealing with climate change and so why on earth do we allow a few people to run on profitable businesses to really undermine the thing for us and I think the whole story of the world the way it's going it's all full of a lot of these nonsense things but if you cut right through it and see really clearly you know what you have to do it's pretty simple and I think the whole our planet project is to give that clarity to say
look we can fix this but you just need to the will to kind of do it the other thing we've seen in changed you know when we started conservation was about preserving pandas and it was you know in national parks those are all very worthy things I think the big change is a recognition that by saving biodiversity is not just about fluffy bear bunnies it's it's about the health of the planet because things are beginning to break down globally because the you know we've lost so much biodiversity and if the planet is going to recover the main thing the pine needs for that recovery is biodiversity very alarming report this week about the loss of insects what kind of knowing that's for going on
maybe not as bad as that but you know insects of the fabric of the world all that said they pollinate but you can't have soil without insects doesn't work because they play cycle everything around it and if you lose that whole lair you know it doesn't work for anyone and so we hope you know we'll get these this meshes through that nature is no longer just nice to have it's essential so does all of these things make you optimistic or pessimistic about the future of the natural world I think very optimistic if we can motivate people to do some do the things that need to be done quickly what we haven't got a lot of is time has gone so what we have to do is to motivate change there's huge amounts of indications that the penny is
dropping and what's the big businesses governments this all and so forth you know I'm prepared to start to make change but the race against time now is acute so if we can do it in time optimistic if we prevaricate for even a few more years we've lost the game so it's now all about focusing everyone on this is what has to happen and let's invest in it and do it I mean the human species is extremely clever you know we're very good at fixing things and there's absolutely no doubt that there is technology out there to solve almost all the problems you know we know that human population is probably going to plateau in the 50s 2050 is we get richer we have less children and so I agree with Keith and optimistically it's
within grasp politically it's more challenging but you know and what literally I mean that final line in the opening episode what we do in the next 20 years I think what is also really important as people used to think there's the kind of nature there's us and I think now people the pennies drop these two things are not they are intimately tied together you can't talk about us without nature because actually that nature there's no asked and so it very much is our planet in our problem and you know we need it I think we'll start to see change pretty fast what do you think of the main things that's stopping there from her name I think there's a failure to realize
the actual scale of the problem I mean climate change is a classic example of you know people have really not worked out that this is a massive beast that's gonna bite everyone very badly and if it gets runs out of control it's a very well it's it's far more dangerous than anything else you could ever face so I think this realization that we have a news culture where short-term problems and short-term news hits the headline rather than insidious long-term problem so we have to get to the point of recognizing hey this is the biggest problem and then just invest in solving it we've got all the resources you need just need to move cash from certain things into dealing you know nature
needs now we've conquered nature and it's in how needs investment to be able to thrive again but we needed to thrive and I still think that global economies are based too much on short-term gain rather than long-term sustainability one of the key things in Davos and why it was an amazing opportunity for us to be at Davos and speak at Davos is that you know that is a forum of it of economists and business leaders and they're beginning to write real that if you want a sustainable business doing anything you have to have a sustainable resource they're all based on a resource in the natural world none of them can escape that and so you know it's it's not conservation is not just about saving tigers it's about
preserving our own planet for you know for our children and we're we're very inspired because there is no political problem that mankind is has ever faced that's as important as the one we're now facing now this spinning of Delos there's when you think of the sort of political situation around this we think of Donald Trump as being one of those people that's doing really damaging creating really damaging environmental policy if you had a chance to sit down with someone with him or a politician like him who's doing sort of similar things what sort of message would you try and get through it I don't think there's any chance of getting a message who is Donald Trump I mean the irony of
Donald Trump actually is that when he pulled out of Paris there was a lot of conservationists who thought that was a disaster ironically green issues and green politics have never been more powerful in the States than that they're now and you know the governor of California's the ninth biggest economy on the planet just said well Donald Trump because he likes we are going to be the most green economy we can and actually you could argue that people like him encourage you know environmentalism and you look at you know the president of Brazil the new president of Brazil never has a protection of the Amazon been more talked about because you know so swings and roundabouts I don't think you could I mean you know why bother
really I think for most politicians they've got to think now very carefully about do they want to end up being on the wrong side of history and the other thing is which David says a lot you know can you look your children or grandchildren in the eye and said I ignored this I did nothing and I think for all of us that now is yeah that's that's a difficult question you we know what we've done with the generations that have done it can you look into yeah the people who are gonna ruin their inherit what we've left them and say we did nothing to make it better our ambition is to communicate to a billion people and that isn't over up to you know over optimistic we are very loft and the Netflix series will attract half a billion there's a hundred and
thirty nine million subscribers each of those you know I mean do you have a Netflix subscription you know you can have three or four other people yeah so you know I'm sure your granny shares your subscription yeah so yeah you know just those numbers then you head out the online the our telecom and you know the other thing that will really change business is men and women in the street saying I am NOT gonna buy a computer that isn't green I'm not gonna I'm not gonna eat meat as much as I did we have an immense power and politicians will jump when you know you just have to take the example of the plastics you know a blue tenet - within a month government was changing government policy and stuff
and so we have a voice we and together I think we can really put pressure on politicians out of all of your experiences that you guys have had filming in that natural world what is there one thing that stands out as the sort of natural phenomenon and natural spectacle that you'd most want your say your great-grandchildren to be able to see for me it's often it's related to particular animals and I spent a lot of work time working with chimpanzees and there's such amazing animals when you look into the eyes of chimpanzee and you know that's it's you know intelligent thinking being you just know that and the other one for me would be polar bears it's a lot of time with them and you know they are the poster
child for global warming and it would you know there's a really good chance that the exponent of errors will go basically extinct in 40 years you know there may be a few relic populations but and to think that the largest land carnivore on our planet would go lankan all go extinct around such graces but I mean would be heartbreaking and for me I guess the a lot of underwater films and a coral reef is you know you dive on a really pristine coral reef it is the most incredible thing than if you die but it's the most incredible thing you can have a witness and the fact that you know coral reefs are going really fast than people might not be able future generations may not be able to experience quarry just is it's just a
incredibly terrible thought because this is a whole kind of ecosystem that is that's taken hundreds of millions of years to come about and it's the most exquisite and beautiful complex thing nature has ever created and it can go in a couple of centuries as though that you know that's that's the one thing I hope that we can say to them and the big migrations of Africa unlike the Serengeti distill to be able to see big animals roam and you know lands jump on Buffalo and cheetahs chase gazelles to still to be able to see nature as it was there to be exists you know with nothing to do with us there's another thing that we just have to keep that was Keith Scholey and Alistair Fothergill talking
about their new show our planet which would go live on Netflix on April the 5th thanks for listening to the science focus podcast in the latest issue of BBC science focus magazine the first featuring our brand new redesign we explore the hidden power of the brain we also take a look at the oldest galaxies in the universe examine why charismatic leaders can be successful despite a complete lack of competence and introduced a new section called reality check and as always there's much more inside thank you for listening to the science focus podcast from the BBC science focus magazine team with the UK's best-selling Science and Technology monthly available in print and in
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